Hixson's project involves new technologies for medical resequencing to identify genetic variants that influence uric acid levels (major gout risk factor) and gout, a painful and potentially debilitating disease that is one of the most common forms of arthritis. In collaboration with investigators at the IMM and Johns Hopkins University, targeted genes will be resequenced in more than 1,000 subjects from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study cohort to pinpoint novel DNA variants that occur in gout patients. The identification of such variants will provide an improved understanding of molecular mechanisms that regulate uric acid levels, and eventually lead to novel drug targets to improve treatment of gout.
The NIH Challenge Grant selection process was highly competitive with NIH officials receiving about 20,000 applications and awarding about 750 projects, an NIH representative said.
Lichtenberger received a $990,000 NIH Challenge Grant to study non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and their side effects. He is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology at the UT Medical School.
Lichtenberger has found that chemically associating a substance called phosphatidylcholine with NSAIDs like aspirin and ibuprofen may reduce gastrointestinal bleeding and ulcers associated with NSAID use.
Dunn received a $960,000 NIH Challenge Grant for a study titled "A Medical Home Pilot Evaluation: A Model for Comparative Effectiveness Research." Dunn is an assistant professor of health informatics at The University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston.
Bernstam received a $950,000 NIH Challenge Grant to make clinical data more accessible to medical researchers. He is an associate professor at both the UT School of Health Information Sciences at Houston and UT Medical School at Houston.
"Healthcare data, unlike clinical trial data, are not collected with a research question in mind. Thus, they may be poorly structured and contain protected health information or identifying phrases such as 'senator with lymphoma.' Our unifying hypothesis is that concept level approaches can be applied to Clinical Data Warehouses to bring meaning to vast amounts of healthcare data while protecting subject privacy," Bernstam said.
Spudich and Sineshchekov received a $900,000 NIH Challenge Grant to develop new tools for photocontrol of neural activity. Spudich is the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry and director of the Center for Membrane Biology in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology in the UT Medical School. Sineshchekov is a research associate professor in Spudich's laboratory.
The researchers' proposal follows from their discovery of visual pigment-like photosensor proteins mediating phototaxis (movement toward or away from light) in green algae in 2002. The algal light-sensors, called channelrhodopsins, are membrane-embedded light-gated ion channels that depolarize the algal membrane when photoactivated, controlling the motility of the cells.
"Channelrhodopsins are extremely useful in neuroscience research because when expressed in mammalian cells they can be used for non-invasive l light-activation of neurons, providing an incisive new approach to stimulate targeted neural pathways and map brain circuitry," Spudich said.
Source: University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston